


A Book Left Wide Open

by tarysande



Series: Rose Trevelyan [9]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 14:45:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3176403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarysande/pseuds/tarysande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His face is a book left wide open. Anyone might look into it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Book Left Wide Open

“How did you do it?” Rose asked.

Cullen looked up from his paperwork, puzzled. She sat opposite him, book open in her lap. If he wasn’t mistaken, she hadn’t turned a single page since the last time he’d glanced her way. “Pardon me?”

“I see you, you know. During council meetings, while you're drilling your troops. When you look at me. Especially when you think I’m not watching.”

Rising as she spoke, she walked around his desk, the fingertips of one hand pressed to the wood as though the sturdiness might grant her strength. Not that she needed the help. Those hands were slim and elegant, but no one who knew her would have dared questioned their strength. Her strength. She stopped when she was close enough to touch. She did not reach out to him. Sitting back in his chair, he folded his own hands in his lap to still the urge to close the distance.

“You're so expressive,” she continued softly, musingly, almost to herself. “Your smiles, your eyebrows, the way your lips tremble when you're swallowing a laugh, the flush in your cheek when you're angry or embarrassed or pleased. Grief. Fear. Frustration. Joy, sometimes. The best times. And I just… how did you hide it? I don't understand.”

He couldn't have said how exactly his face betrayed him—the blush she spoke of, perhaps; the shift of his brows or tilt of his lips—but he knew it must, because she looked away, color rising in her own cheeks. “I've offended you. Forgive me.”

“Not… offended,” he replied, resisting the urge to rub at the side of his neck or duck his head. If he’d been standing, he almost certainly would have shifted his weight. “A little confused, I confess.”

Lifting her fingers away from the desk, she pressed them instead to his cheekbone, gazing at him like he was a question she was desperate for the answer to. On the rare occasions she focused all her energy on a single purpose, it always took him aback, reminded him what a force she was beyond these walls. For good reason. His cheek twitched beneath her gentle touch, but he didn’t pull back, and didn’t look away.

“You were frowning just now, when I looked up and saw you reading.” She shook her head, a slight smile pulling at her own lips. “No, not just frowning—glowering. Someone’s done something stupid, and left you to tidy up the mess. I could practically hear the cursing. Very inventive, Commander.”

“I can’t argue that, though I daresay you’ll be as involved as I.”

She took another step closer, and another, until her leg brushed against his bent knees. He inhaled deeply when he realized his lungs burned with an unconsciously held breath. The rose scent of her perfume mingled with the ever-present sweet, sharp scent of her magic. The combined smell always reminded him of watching midsummer thunderstorms from the relative safety of his mother’s garden. Comforting, mostly, but a little dangerous, too. Appropriate, really. “And that makes you even more frustrated. You hate when people waste your time, but people wasting mine? Insufferable.”

He chuckled because she was right. Down to the very word choice.  _Insufferable_ was precisely what he’d been thinking when she’d raised her first question.

Leaning forward, she pressed a kiss to his brow; he forced it to unfurrow beneath her touch. A moment later, she pulled back, but didn’t retreat. It would have been a simple matter to return her kiss, but something about her own expression made him pause. She said, “Your face is a book left wide open. Anyone might look into it.”

“And this is… a matter of some concern, considering my position. I understand your—”

“No,” she said, sliding a fingertip to his lips, silencing him. From the bristling sound of her skin against his, he knew he needed to shave. His stubble would redden her skin if he kissed her. And he wanted to. Kiss her. Most desperately. “No, this isn’t a reprimand. Only an observation. I knew my share of templars in Ostwick. Many were dutiful. Some were even kind. But their cheeks never blushed, and if they laughed, I never heard it.” Her hand continued its journey, coming to rest flat-palmed over his heart. “Forgive me. I—suppose I shouldn’t have brought it up. Probably not a scab anyone needs to pick at. Good thing I don’t say everything on my mind when I’m sitting on that big chair out in the main hall. Poor Josephine would have no end of ruffled feathers to smooth.”

He said nothing, dropping his gaze. Freckles dusted the pale skin of her knuckles. His heart beat faster under her hand. Beneath her nails, a little caked dirt told him she’d spent the morning in her garden, harvesting rare plants. Perhaps picking the flowers she liked to leave from one end of Skyhold to the other. She often brought him Andraste’s Grace, plucked daisies for Varric, sprinkled forget-me-nots on Solas’ desk, left perfect specimens of her own namesake where Leliana might find them and smile. Perhaps Cole told her. And perhaps he didn’t need to.

“Some would say I failed,” he said softly, staring at the back of her hand because he could not bear to meet her eyes. “That—especially in my early days at Kinloch Hold—I was too lenient. Too permissive. Too apt to forget a templar’s duty. Not serious _enough_. Does that make you laugh?”

“No,” she said.

“No,” he echoed. “No, I suppose not.” When he lifted his gaze, he found her watching him steadily. She was little better than he at masking her emotions; she wore her concern openly, and even in the dim light he could see the shimmer of unshed tears along her lashes. “I was asleep for a long time. Even when I clawed my way to wakefulness, I was angry. Bitter. And, even with my eyes open, the nightmares didn’t end. I was… you would not have cared for the man I was. After Uldred. Or in Kirkwall.”

“Cassandra saw something more.”

“Or she needed someone who’d be ruthless in the execution of her aims. Someone who’d follow orders. Even questionable ones.”

Rose blinked, freeing a tear, her lips parted in a startled ‘o’. Her fingers spasmed but didn’t leave his breast. “You don’t believe that.”

Halfway through a shrug, he aborted the gesture, instead lifting his hand to brush away the moisture on her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “No, I don’t. The ideals of the Inquisition are too important to her. She was looking for allies, not tools.”

“And now? Are you awake now?”

“More than I’ve ever been.” He sighed, covering her hand with his own. “And yet sometimes I worry this is only the most devious dream, a dream where I am permitted feelings I was never allowed before, and I fear what waking might do to me.”

“It’s not a dream.”

“No?” He moved swiftly, catching her off-guard, rising from his chair and scooping up the slight weight of her with his free arm. When he moved to deposit her on his desk, she flung her arm around his neck, locked her ankles behind his hips, and held tight. Turning his head, he buried his face in the curve of her neck. The rose scent was stronger, and she was delightfully warm in his arms.

“No,” he whispered into her soft skin as the curls of her hair tickled his brow. “If you hear me laugh, it’s because I  _know_ I’m awake. If my face betrays me, I suppose it’s because it  _can_. It’s heady, this waking world, free from that heavy duty I had begun to doubt and the lyrium that numbed so much else. Colors richer, scents stronger, tastes more vivid. Josephine sent me shortbread so delicious I nearly wept. The templar I was—even at Kinloch Hold, even  _before_ —would never have cried over cookies.”

She tilted her head to the side, granting him better access. He obliged her by trailing a line of kisses from her shoulder, up her neck—she shivered—and along the line of her jaw. When he caught her lips, she returned the kiss with fervor, tightening her legs with an insistent kind of pressure that all but guaranteed another hour spent plucking scattered papers from the floor. At least this time there was no inconvenient glass to break. Not that he’d minded, precisely.

By the time the kiss ended, Rose was half-sprawled beneath him, one ankle still hooked around the back of his thigh. The new growth of his beard had chafed her skin, but she only shook her head and offered a breathless laugh like a gift, reaching up to cup his face with one hand. He leaned into the touch, but didn’t want to deprive himself of the sight of her, so kept his eyes open.

“Maker,” she said, with wonder, with joy, with an entirely different shimmer of tears, “the way you look at me, Cullen.”

He sighed as he felt a blush rise. “Yes, a book left wide open.”

“Don’t close it,” she said. Begged, really. As if he wouldn’t do his utmost to spare her even the requirement of asking anything of him. As if he weren’t hers to command in every possible way. “Please. I cannot tell you how dear to me are the stories written on its pages.”

“Half as dear as the tales your face speaks to me?”

“Twice as,” she insisted, urging him back to her, her kisses warm with promises and truth. “Let me show you.”

Shortbread, he learned then, learned well, learned without anything resembling shame, was not the only thing that could bring him to tears.


End file.
